


Burning bright

by artisan447



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: College Student Stiles, Community: picfor1000, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Pining Derek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:45:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artisan447/pseuds/artisan447
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles goes to college, and Derek absolutely does not pine. No, really. He's FINE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning bright

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [picfor1000](http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Community:%20picfor1000/works), prompted by [this picture](http://www.flickr.com/photos/feltmates/2916687572/). Beta by [dogeared](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dogeared/pseuds/dogeared).  
> (with apologies to William Blake for gross misuse of his poetry)

 

Stiles loses his phone the first week of college. 

Derek thinks it had something to do with O-week, a keg and almost choking on a pickled egg? Whatever, according to Stiles, the shot party wasn't even all that good. Not phone-losing-worthy, anyway. 

Still. No phone. No texting, no messages, no calls.

Which would be have been fine, they still have Skype, except that Stiles kind of blows that, too, when he gets so bored with not being able to text that he makes a surreptitious Skype call from the library _("Sound's muted, I'm in the silent zone. I can lip read, so you talk I'll type. Just don't make me laugh")._

If that's not a challenge then Derek's never seen one, and he can be funny (what? He can!). Apparently Stiles' sneaky face and mobile eyebrows are all it takes for him to be sufficiently motivated. Turns out his sock-puppet re-enactment of Princess Leia taking out Jabba the Hut isn't just funny, it's hilarious. Stiles laughs so hard he spills a whole soda into the laptop's keyboard _and_ loses library privileges for a week. Who knew Derek had it in him?

They eventually manage to connect via Stiles' roommate's laptop, and it's probably some kind of perverse guilt that has him offering to pay for the repairs. That, or Stiles' horrified face and pitiful clutching of the dead laptop to his chest as he refuses point blank to accept he needs a new one _("Dude! WTF? YOU gave me this one. You said, and I quote, 'go slay 'em, tiger'. I will DIE with this laptop in my hands!")._

The warranty will cover some of the work, but it's a shame it apparently has to be sent to _Mars_ to be fixed (the service repair estimate is a month, what the hell's with that?)

Anyway. Long story short? No Skype and no email, either.

Derek wouldn't admit it to anyone -- it's not like he and Stiles are joined at the hip -- but it leaves him feeling adrift. They've only been together a few months (no way he was letting anything happen before Stiles turned 18) but it feels like forever. What's between them feels so inevitable that maybe it has been forever -- maybe they've always been joined at the molecular level, and Derek just refused to see it? To hear Stiles tell it, he virtually had to hit Derek over the head with a bat to get the point across that the feeling was mutual (except, it really wasn't so virtual -- the Gorgon dodged when Stiles swung, and well, mountain ash bats hurt like hell, okay?).

It should have been Stiles freaking out at the no communication thing, but maybe he has enough to do that he doesn't think about Derek every minute of every day. Doesn't see Derek's shadow in the empty spaces of his room, or hear a vast echoing silence in the darkness of late night. 

Derek has a whole 48 hours to convince himself that maybe Stiles just doesn't miss him the same way and construct deep, elaborate interpretations of what that _means_ , before the first postcard arrives. It's a picture of Detroit, circa 1930, covered in snow, and Stiles has written: **_Dude! It snowed!_** accompanied by a huge smiley face, in black marker on the back. 

Derek embarrasses himself by standing at the mailbox for a long while, just smiling -- it's a postcard, from Stiles -- and so it's not until he's in the loft that he sees the smaller words scrawled at the bottom: _**Stop freaking out, I miss you more. Will find a pay phone & call Sat night. **_ Looks like any power he ever had to be mysterious has completely evaporated.

Anyway, that's only three days away, and he can do that. He can run patrol -- although since they managed to shut the Nemeton down, Beacon Hills has become the poster child for peaceful rural town. Still, there must be things he can do. It's only three days.

Another postcard arrives the next day, and one the day after that, and he has all three lined up on the coffee table when Stiles calls.

"Oh, man! Pay phones! I mean seriously, they're as scarce as freaking dinosaurs! Do you have any idea how many layers I have on right now?"

"That tough, huh?" He's grinning stupidly into the phone, and he doesn't care a bit.

"Come on! I have to literally _write_ my lecture notes. BY HAND. Can you imagine what it must have been like living in the seventies? God, I miss you so freaking much! Did you get the postcards?"

So he feels better. It's not just him.

They make it a regular thing. Every Saturday for the next four weeks, no matter the weather, Stiles gets himself to a pay phone (on one memorable occasion, he calls from Windsor: _"Do you realize I'm phoning from Canada? I literally needed a passport to make this call! How freaking cool is that?!"_ ).

Meanwhile, the mail continues, almost daily. Postcards, letters; somehow Stiles makes friends with an English exchange student with a Polaroid camera (Derek has no idea why he's surprised) which results in a flood of instant photos. 

They don't all make him smile, though. His black mood lasts a full day after the one from the lacrosse win celebration arrives; #6 better hope he never meets Derek face-to-face.

Then the packages start. At first they're small -- a crocodile-clip magnet ( _it's for the fridge, loser_ , although what he's supposed to do with a Detroit Titans clip on the fridge is anyone's guess), an executive pen ( _Come on! You're supposed to write back!_ ). 

Stiles is clearly enjoying himself when he sends the weird hat with tassels. Derek wouldn't be caught dead in it even if the polar vortex hit California _today_.

But it's okay, he's getting through the days and absolutely not pining like a teenager. That is until the felted Detroit Tigers mascot arrives. It's not the toy itself, or the fact that Stiles obviously remembered that baseball is Derek's sport. It's the carefully written note stuffed into the package under the tiger's arm that makes his heart clench with affection: 

_Tyger tyger burning bright_  
_My supernatural hero of the night_  
_Come what may come what might_  
_I'll jerk off thinking of you tonight._

 

\--the end--

**Author's Note:**

> For the visual among us -- stuff Stiles sent Derek:  
> [postcard](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/ms_artisan/1973036/110554/110554_original.jpg), [lacrosse win polaroid](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/ms_artisan/1973036/110650/110650_original.jpg), [Titans crocodile-clip](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/ms_artisan/1973036/111004/111004_original.jpg), [Titans executive pen](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/ms_artisan/1973036/111237/111237_original.jpg), [Tigers taselled cap](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/ms_artisan/1973036/111547/111547_original.jpg). And of course, the [picfor100 pic that started it all](https://www.flickr.com/photos/feltmates/2916687572/).


End file.
